Reproductive behaviours in a risky world: are mothers trading-off offspring safety for future fitness?

危险世界中的生殖行为：母亲是否会为了未来的健康而牺牲后代的安全？

• 批准号: 284056073
• 负责人: Professorin Dr. Jana Eccard
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Arbeitsgruppe Tierökologie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2014-12-31 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/284056073?language=en
• 关键词: Reproductive; behaviours; risky; world; mothers

Behaviour is a highly flexible trait. It varies among individuals as well as within individuals with environmental conditions and among life stages. Predation risk is a major determinant of behavioural variation at all of these levels. However, individuals do not only have to eat without been eaten, they also have to balance the risk of mortality with their investment into reproduction. Some prey animals reduce their parental behaviour and investment under predation risk, as shown for song birds. Whether this pattern can be generalized to other taxa with intense reproductive investment remains to be investigated. Moreover, little is known how animals can balance own survival, current reproductive investment, and future reproductive investment at the same time. Small rodents are a highly suitable study system for studying trade-offs between reproductive and anti-predatory behaviours. They are highly depredated, have flexible mating system (i.e. can mate singly or multiply), and can potentially simultaneously invest into nestling litters (current investment) and pregnancy (future investment). This produces a conflict between caring for the current offspring, and leaving the offspring temporally behind for mating in order to be able to invest into future offspring. With their concurrent and sequential pregnancy and lactation, small rodents are suitable study system to experimentally separate the effects of predation risk on different stages in the life cycle on the trade-off between current reproductive investment (nest guarding) and future reproductive investment (mating behaviour).Here I want to experimentally study the flexibility and constraints of rodent reproductive behaviour in response to predation risk at various life stages: 1) infanticide risk for nestlings (current reproductive investment) on mothers investment into mate search (future reproductive investment);2) predation risk for the mother on her investment into mate search (future reproductive investment) and 3) predation risk for the mother on her mating strategy (monandric or polyandric involving variation in genetic diversity of investment). In all experiments, individual variation in time allocation, physiological responses, space use and mating success will be monitored allowing quantifying both behavioural and fitness consequences. Experiments will be conducted in different spatial and temporal scales: behavioural observations in the laboratory and automated telemetry observations in semi-natural enclosures. Results of the experiments will give novel estimates of the general flexibility of reproductive behaviour and for the first time measure life-history trade-offs of reproduction and mortality risk for individuals in semi-natural settings. A potential contribution of adaptations of reproductive behaviour in a risky world to predator-prey dynamics can be investigated in a second funding phase..

行为是一种高度灵活的特质。它在个体之间以及在具有环境条件的个体内部和在生命阶段之间变化。捕食风险是所有这些层面行为变异的主要决定因素。然而，个体不仅要吃而不被吃，他们还必须平衡死亡风险和他们对繁殖的投资。一些猎物减少其父母的行为和投资下捕食风险，如歌鸟。这种模式是否可以推广到其他类群的激烈的生殖投资仍有待研究。此外，人们还不知道动物如何同时平衡自身的生存、当前的生殖投资和未来的生殖投资。小型啮齿动物是研究生殖和反捕食行为之间权衡的非常合适的研究系统。它们是高度掠夺性的，具有灵活的交配系统（即可以单独交配或繁殖），并且可能同时投资于雏鸟窝（当前投资）和怀孕（未来投资）。这就产生了一种冲突，既要照顾现在的后代，又要暂时把后代留在后面交配，以便能够投资于未来的后代。由于她们同时和相继怀孕和哺乳，小型啮齿类动物是合适的研究系统，可以通过实验分离生命周期不同阶段的捕食风险对当前生殖投资之间权衡的影响。（护巢）和未来的生殖投资（交配行为）。在这里，我想通过实验研究啮齿动物生殖行为在不同生命阶段应对捕食风险的灵活性和限制：第一章 雏鸟的杀婴风险（当前的生殖投资）对母亲寻找配偶的投资（未来的生殖投资）;2） 母亲在寻找配偶方面的投资（未来生殖投资）的捕食风险; 母亲在其交配策略上的捕食风险（涉及投资遗传多样性变化的单头或多头）。在所有实验中，将监测时间分配、生理反应、空间利用和交配成功的个体差异，从而量化行为和健身结果。将在不同的空间和时间尺度上进行实验：在实验室进行行为观察，在半自然的围栏内进行自动遥测观察。实验结果将对生殖行为的一般灵活性作出新的估计，并首次衡量半自然环境中个人生殖和死亡风险的生活史权衡。在第二个供资阶段，可以研究在一个危险的世界中生殖行为的适应对捕食者-被捕食者动态的潜在贡献。